In the Spotlight

Lichen, Vellum, and Silver Ink: Chicago Hand Bookbinders Exhibit Celebrates the Art of the Book

Part tree trunk, part antique book spine, Melissa Jay Craig’s “Prairie Palimpsest #3: Enlichened” stretches up with an ambiguous flourish toward the top of its vertical exhibit case. Inverting the spatial relationship of leaves to tree trunk, its “leaves”—in this case representing the leaves of a book, or pages—are enclosed within its covers, and consist of scaly ridges of the promised lichen. Is that a joke? Is it a commentary? Is it a book?

“Sculpturally, it’s beautiful,” says Donia Conn, Northwestern University Library’s Head of Conservation Services, “and if the artist calls it a book, it’s a book.”

“Prairie Palimpsest #3: Enlichened” is among the 16 works featured in this year’s annual traveling Chicago Hand Bookbinders exhibit, “High & Low,” in the Library’s main floor exhibit space from July 3 through September 13. The display also includes Eileen Madden’s “Lammas Moon,” a poem by William Morgan printed in hand-set type in silvery ink on long sheets of hand-made indigo paper. Silvia R. Alotta’s “Roller Coaster” features a pop-up roller coaster silhouette. Karen Hanmer’s “The Sleepwalkers” is a copy of Arthur Koestler’s 1959 bestselling history of astronomy bound in hand-made vellum, which Conn describes as “goat skin that’s soaked in lye, stretched to the gills, and scraped and scraped and scraped. It’s really difficult to work with, but it’s soft and smooth and supple and it’s practically alive; no two books you bound with it would ever look alike.”

Chicago Hand Bookbinders is an organization of amateur, student, and professional binders that was founded in 1978 to promote awareness and appreciation of hand-made books. Conn says over the years, the field of bookbinding has broadened its scope from focusing mainly on fine bindings to including the sorts of sculptural and artistic interpretations represented in the current exhibit. “The question this exhibit always raises,” she says, “is: what is a book?”

For more information on Chicago Hand Bookbinders, visit www.chicagohandbookbinders.org.